A Place of Peace Read online

  “That is a cruel thing to say,” she told the boy. “What gives anyone the right to do that?”

  The boy shrugged and fell silent. Melinda saw he was visibly crushed by her sharp tone, and she had perhaps said her words with a angry voice, and she felt sorry for him.

  “I’ll get my father for you,” she said, leaving him standing at the door. “Good afternoon.”

  That had been the last time she saw that boy. Frank Johnson had told her father the boy had enlisted up in Gallatin. Melinda’s father had grown quiet at the news, and Melinda knew at that point, her father was leaving her.

  Now it was April, and the crows were eyeing the small corn plants with anticipation. Melinda dusted off her long skirt as she walked through the fields. She held her broom over her shoulder like a sword, and when she looked back over the field, she didn’t think she had done such a bad job planting all she could. There were the tomato plants, although she made a mental note to pay special attention to those in the morning, and there were the rows of corn that stretched almost the entire length of the field. Next to them were the pepper plants and the watermelon vines. Not much yet to see except a poking green bud here and there, but soon they would be growing fast, and Melinda knew it was then that she would have to be out here every day to fight the endless war with the weeds and the bugs.

  Later in the evening as she drifted back and forth on the old swing tied to the back porch, she looked out over the fields at the spot usually reserved for the tobacco setting. It was barren now. Melinda did not have the plants or the resources to set enough tobacco to be worth harvesting. She would have to make due with what she already had, and that would have to be enough.

  ***

  SHE HEARD THE FAMILIAR rumble of a wagon coming up the road, and she stepped out on the front porch to see who it could be. Perhaps it was a letter carrier with news from her father. She tried to hide her disappointment as she saw it was only Frank Johnson coming up to her house. He had a basket of something sitting beside him. She knew her father had asked him to check up on her now and then, and he had agreed to it.

  Melinda didn’t mind. She liked visitors and was more than willing to entertain Frank Johnson, who had been a good neighbor to her and her father now for as long as Melinda could remember. Frank had been too old to enlist, not that he really wanted to. In fact, he had tried to talk her father out of enlisting, but in the end, it always came down to the money. Right or wrong, ethics and morals and the Confederate Cause had nothing to do with it. Melinda’s father needed the money.

  She waved to Frank as he stopped his horse. Even from where she stood, she could smell the bread from the basket, and when Frank handed it to her, she was right. It was still warm, and was a gift from Frank’s wife, Joan.

  Melinda made coffee, and Frank accepted with a faint smile as the two sat on the front porch.

  “You’re getting along okay here, aren’t you?” asked Frank. There was a touch of concern in his voice that worried Melinda.

  “Sure. I mean, there’s a lot to do, and I stay busy with the gardens. So far, my biggest problem has been with the crows.”

  Frank nodded, the fatherly smile not leaving his face. “Crows, yes. I’ve had my share of problems with them, too.”

  His voice faded, and Melinda occupied herself with sipping her coffee. She normally didn’t drink it, but she decided to have some on account of her guest. But Frank wasn’t saying much else. He seemed to want to, but instead he just sat there and looked at his wagon and horse parked twenty feet away.

  “Any news of the war?” Melinda slowly asked. He didn’t seem to want to volunteer information: never a good sign that things were okay.

  “Well,” said Frank as if he suddenly didn’t want to answer. “According to the paper I saw up in Gallatin, there’s been a battle between our boys and those Yanks down the river a bit.”

  “What kind of battle?” Melinda didn’t like the way Frank was drawing out his answers with long pauses, as if he was hiding something.

  Frank shrugged. “Don’t know. That boy that used to work for me, Luke, the one who came up here all the time. Remember him?”

  Melinda slowly nodded.

  “Spoke to his father the other day. They got the official word that he’d been shot by a Yank sharpshooter. Popped right off his horse.” Frank’s voice grew tense. “They didn’t send the body home. They told them he’d been buried where he got shot. Couldn’t have a decent Christian burial.”

  Melinda took a deep breath. Her coffee was suddenly too hot, and Frank’s eyes were dark and shining.

  “Has there been any word on your father?” he asked suddenly. Melinda grew cold and the steam from her cup gave no comfort.

  “Last letter I got was from Mississippi,” she said. “Corinth. He said he was okay and they were moving soon. That’s all.”

  Frank nodded. “If you get a chance,” he said. “Tell that old fool he’s got no business running around in this fool of a war. Tell him to come home and tend to his farm. He needs to be planting seeds, not his fellow soldiers.”

  Melinda smiled a little at the older man’s cranky tone. “I’ll tell him,” she promised. “As soon as I can find out where I can send a letter.”

  “Good girl.” Frank stood and put his hat back on his head. “Enjoy that bread, and if you need anything, just holler up the road and me or Joan will help you anyway we can.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Johnson,” Melinda waved goodbye as his wagon rumbled off down the road.

  As he left, she thought about that boy. His name had been Luke. Funny, she had never thought to ask him his name when he was here all those times, but now the face had a name to go with it, and he couldn’t have been more than eighteen.

  She dumped the rest of her coffee over the porch rail into the flowers and went inside. The morning chill for her just got a lot colder.

  CHAPTER THREE

  COLBY KEPT CLUTCHING THE letter as the wagon jostled him past the point of any kind of sleep. He knew it was night, but the covering on the wagon made it impossible to see the stars. So instead, he lay on his back and stared at the darkly white canopy and pretended he could see stars, like the ones on his farm.

  His leg hurt, but he was glad because if he felt the pain, it meant it was still attached to his body. However, what they did on the operating table was probably a lot more painful that if they had just taken the saw and cut the whole thing off.

  He winced at the memory and winced again as a rough bounce knocked his leg against the side of the wagon. Colby was supposed to be discharged and sent home, but he didn’t think that’s where he was headed. Around him, big burlap sacks stuffed with paper created a crude pillow for him, but each bounce sent a new cascade of letters spilling out into the floor of the wagon.

  He had managed to catch a ride home on one of the mail carts heading north to Nashville. From there, Colby figured he could arrange for other transportation. It was a long trip, and he couldn’t sleep.

  So he held the letter of his departed tent mate from the field hospital. He had probably read it a hundred times, but what made the last few readings so different was that he now had a face to put with the name Melinda.

  Before Colby had grabbed the whiskey and drank a rapid series of toasts to his dead tent mate, he had noticed a glint of silver in the dead man’s pocket that must have been pulled out when Colby pulled the letter. It was a chain, and as Colby went back and pulled on it, a locket swung out. Inside was a small portrait of a girl, probably sixteen or seventeen, with sharp red hair and ridiculously round eyes that seemed to stare out past the edge of the portrait and into Colby’s soul. He lay there in the tent, bleeding, drinking and looking at the portrait of the man’s daughter who now had a name: Melinda Jacoby.

  He held the letter until the paper crumbled beneath his fingers. Poor girl, he thought as he stared at her face. Two hundred miles away and not the faintest idea of what fate had in store for your father. Who would tell her the news? Would she have
to read it in the papers or perhaps an official message from a dispatch would tell her? He looked at her again. Her eyes, innocent, not having ever seen the horror of war. She hadn’t seen fifty-nine men cut to ribbons on a hillside like Colby had. The most traumatic thing she had probably ever seen was her cat killing a mouse.

  He would tell her. He would find her and tell her. For some reason, Colby felt he had an invisible bond with her father in his last minutes on earth, and he seemed to tell him to break the news to her. Tell her how I am gone and deliver my last letter to her.

  And Colby said he would even as he drained the last of the whiskey and the orderlies carted him off to the surgeon’s tent where a long, thin blade was used to dig into his wound and pry out the chunk of flattened lead from against his bone. The entire time Colby held Melinda’s portrait with shaking fingers and didn’t scream at all.

  ***

  THE WAGON CREAKED TO a stop, and Colby opened his eyes. Despite the best efforts of the wagon, he had managed to doze off, and now he saw the morning sun lighting up the canvas overhead. He heard voices from outside, and realized the wagon driver was afraid: the sound in his voice was higher-pitched and his words were coming out rapidly. Colby nudged the bags of mail that had fallen on him over to the side and peeked out from beneath the wagon cover.

  The first thing he noticed was the horses. There were at least thirty of them, and their riders wore sharp blue uniforms with their brass buttons glittering in the morning sunlight. A union banner snapped proudly in the wind: the stars and stripes: an image Colby had seen many times through the haze of smoke on the battlefield.

  The cavalry had the wagon surrounded, and one of the men stepped up, his pistol still pointed at the wagon driver. The others had their rifles ready, as their captain motioned with his gun.

  “This wagon and its contents are being seized on behalf of the United States of America,” the captain announced. “You are ordered to disembark immediately and forfeit this vessel to us.”

  The wagon driver was still speaking, practically rambling about how his mail was not seizeable property and that his was a civilian, not a military mail wagon, and therefore, was not subject to being stopped.

  Colby wished the man would stop talking. He was only going to give them a reason to search the wagon, and then not only would they find out the man was lying, but that he was transporting a Confederate soldier as well. He wondered how far they were from Nashville if Union troops were this far north. He assumed they hadn’t gotten too far, and this detachment who had stopped them was part of the larger army to the south. If the cavalry was up this way along this road then that meant...

  The Confederates had lost their battle and had retreated south, leaving the western half of Tennessee open to the Yankee army. Colby grew cold at the thought. He heard some of the horses moving outside and a bearded man wearing a blue cap poked his head through the opening in the back of the wagon.

  “Captain,” he shouted. “We got us a reb back here!” A rifle barrel was leveled at Colby, who immediately put his hands up.

  The captain, not amused by this, ordered the wagon driver down from his post. More men appeared, more rifles were pointed at Colby as hands reached in to drag him out. He was yanked off the mail bags and dragged out of the wagon to fall on the still-wet grass. His leg had twisted up beneath him as he fell, and the pain was a blue streak of fire racing from his knee to his brain.

  Through watering eyes, Colby looked up to see the wagon driver, his face frozen with fear, and his hands moving very slowly behind the bench on which he sat.

  “No!” Colby yelled at him, but it was too late. The wagon driver’s hands had found the shotgun he kept under his seat. The captain, too preoccupied with his new rebel prisoner, didn’t see the driver bringing up the gun until it was too late.

  A thunderclap, followed by twenty rifle cracks in response. Colby covered his head as he felt bits of wood shaved off the wagon by the ricocheting bullets showering down around him. When he dared to open his eyes again, the wagon driver was lying still on the wagon bench while most of the cavalry had dismounted to tend to their fallen captain, who was now lying on the ground wheezing.

  Two soldiers stayed with Colby, their guns still glinting coldly in his direction. They were watching Colby, and he was very aware that they were very close to shooting him.

  “Get up,” one of them snarled. He looked ready to kick Colby, but Colby’s leg was probably broken by the combination of his wound and his new fall from the wagon. He couldn’t stand, but before he could say anything, the kick did come, but it didn’t hurt: as if the soldier didn’t want to bother with the effort of actually hurting him.

  “Captain’s dead!” one of the men shouted from the gathering. “Shot dead!”

  “Do you hear that?” one of Colby’s guards said. “Captain’s dead! What does that mean for you?”

  “Please,” was all Colby could manage to say. “I didn’t know he had a gun.”

  Another man stepped over to stand over Colby. He had a handlebar mustache that curled off into his sideburns, and he leveled a pistol at Colby’s head.

  “Sir,” he announced. “I am Lieutenant Martin, and I declare you a prisoner of war under the authority of the United States of America.”

  So, the second in command was now the commander of this brigade. Colby nodded and motioned to his leg.

  “Leg’s broken,” he said. “I can’t stand up.”

  Martin didn’t seem concerned about Colby’s leg. “Sergeant!” he barked. “Fire this wagon and take the horse.”

  “Yes, sir,” one of the man snapped to it.

  “Well, son,” Martin squatted until he could stare into Colby’s eyes. “You want to tell me where you’re headed now? You don’t look like a spy. But then again, only the rebs would be so stupid as to send out a spy with a broken leg.” A few men chuckled.

  “Sir,” said Colby. “This is a civilian mail wagon. That’s the God’s truth.”

  “Heading to Nashville by the looks of it,” one of the men called from behind the wagon where he was going through some of the letters inside.

  “Is that a fact?” Martin looked at the boy beneath him. Probably not old enough to shave. “What division to you belong to? Or maybe,” he paused. “You’re a deserter.”

  “No, sir,” said Colby.

  “If you are a deserter then you deserve to be shot no matter what army you belong to. If you are a spy, then you will be hanged. It seems unlikely you are a messenger, either.” Martin stood up and Colby breathed a sigh as he watched the lieutenant holster his pistol. “Talk, boy. What do you have to say?”

  He decided the lieutenant had already made up his mind with what he was going to do with Colby no matter what he told him. “I was hitching a ride home with this mail driver, that’s all.”

  Martin nodded, but Colby didn’t think he believed him. “Where are you from, boy?”

  “Just a bit north of Nashville, sir,” Colby said, feeling like he was a traitor. “I was wounded down at Pittsburgh Landing and they sent me home.”

  “Hmmm,” Lieutenant Martin looked over at the dead captain. “Well, boy, I would be lying to you if I said that Captain Walters wasn’t a sorry excuse for an officer, and you might have done us a favor by your man shooting him.”

  The sergeant came over with a burning torch in his hand and handed it to the lieutenant. He applied the fire to the sacks of mail inside, turning them to blackened ash as the fire licked and spread throughout the wagon. Colby edged away from the fierce heat that rippled over him. Martin’s face was wavy behind the flames. Soon, the entire wagon was burning bright, and the men gathered around to watch as if they were gathered around a simple campfire.

  “Bind the prisoner,” said Lieutenant Martin. “He’s going to be coming with us.”

  Colby felt hands yank his own behind his back as a thick rope was wrapped around his wrist so tightly it cut into his skin. He felt his hands beginning to tingle.

  C
olby was hauled to his feet, and he felt his leg buckle. If three pairs of hands weren’t holding him, he was sure he would have promptly fallen back down. He bit his tongue in response to the pain.

  “You aren’t as tall as I imagined,” said Martin as he walked over to look into Colby’s eyes. “If you’re coming from Pittsburgh Landing, perhaps you know something that can help us.”

  The moment of truth was coming, and Colby felt sweat pop out over him despite his efforts to stay calm.

  “I’m sure you were told something while you were down there,” said Martin. “And you are familiar with the geography of Tennessee. Myself, I’m from Ohio, and it’s not quite as primitive as this wretched state. I don’t think it gets quite as hot there as it does here, especially in April.”

  Several of his men nodded in agreement. “Your armies have retreated,” said Martin. “They retreated two weeks ago, but I’m sure you realize that your people cannot possibly win this conflict. You now have a chance to renounce your betrayal of the United States of America and help with our noble cause in crushing this rebellion your little dirt farmer friends have started that have pulled us away from our own homes and families. What do you say?”

  “Go ahead and shoot me,” said Colby. “I don’t have anything to tell you, and I would rather die before I betrayed my homeland.”

  Lieutenant Martin laughed. “What a martyr you are, sir. Look, boys, we have us a real live martyr here!” Some of his men laughed, even though most of them had no idea was a martyr was.

  “Your noble sentiments will only get you locked in a prison camp,” Martin continued. “Or swinging from a tree.”

  “I’ll end up in a prison camp or in a tree no matter what I tell you,” said Colby, wishing the men holding him would put him down. His leg was bursting and he could feel his bandages being soaked scarlet.